Easter Island, the Mayans and Us

What do the great Mayan civilization of 800 AD and the peoples of Easter Island circa 1600 AD have in common with us, 21st century mankind with all our technology and connected lifestyle ?  Surely very little.  Well, we have one thing very much in common, and hopefully not, but possibly two.

The Mayan civilization flourished in South America for hundreds of years and built a society similar in technological ability and city building prowess to the ancient Egyptions, with their Pyramid like Zygaruts jutting out of dense jungle, large city developments and extensive farming.  Unfortunately, the Mayans did not adequately respond to seasonal changes in crop production nor did they effectively manage their environment.  Continued over defforrestation and the resulting degradation of soils through over farming of the same fields without crop rotation led the Mayans to a massive collapse of their food production, leading to famine, disease, and in a matter of just a few years, total destruction of their civilization.
If they had paid attention the signs would have been there, rainwater washing away over exposed soils, decreasing crop production as soil quaility diminished, raising disease levels as populations become too concentrated.

The data was there to be understood, but it was overlooked, perhaps they prayed at the top of their Zigaruts for better fortunes the following harvest...

The Easter Islanders also built a great civilization on a small island in the Pacific.  They also performed impressive feats of engineering and mathematics, moving massive columns of volcanic rock to locations around the island and carving them into the world famous Easter island heads.  An incredibly impressive technical feat even today, there is still signficant puzzlement regarding how they managed to move these immensely heavy rocks.

Unfortunately, yet again, the Easter Island civilization perished almost over night.  Defforestation is seen as the root cause, with the removal of the tree cover the soil on Easter Island became exposed to weatherization and degraded to a point in which crops could not adequately grow and feed their population - famine would come, then disease, then the mass die-out.   Yet again the information would have been there to see, steadily declining tree coverage, rains washing away the soils, crop production decreasing with each year as the soil weathered and washed away.

Clearly we must be MUCH more advanced than these societies right ?  We have been to the Moon, we can talk to our loved ones on a device the size of a few playing cards, with moving video.   We can talk with friends all around the world with a few key presses.   We have hundreds of satellites in space monitoring every aspect of our planet, we have scientists at every point of the globe recording, watching and measuring and trending weather and climate change over days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millenium.

In the Antartic circle we take deep core samples of the packed ice, we sample the chemical make up of air bubbles trapped in this ice and can tell the make up of the atmosphere 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, 10,000 years ago and so on.   In Space we have the ISS and hundreds of other satellites measuring global temperatures, forest density, atmospheric gases.   On land we have cameras watching glacier levels, weather stations recording snowfall, wind, rain, temperature.    Surely we have been watching the data, we have been collecting the data, so surely, obviously, we aren't as stupid as the Mayans and Easter Islanders right ?

Umm, actually yes we are.   A majority of Americans still disbelieve climate change is real and man made; over 60% in fact, even though 99% of scientists in this field agree fully with the findings of the major research instituations, and the United Nations, that this is very much real, very dangerous, and needing urgent attention.

We are adopting the same patterns as the Mayans and Easter Islanders, assuming everything will be alright, writing off any evidence to the contrary as a blip, shooting the messenger when we don't like the reality we are being told of...

What kind of information do we have?  How about this ...

Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported recently that the average global temperature was higher over the past 12 months than during any other 12-month period in history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released corroborating data, adding that the past four months, including June, have each individually been the hottest on record as well.

Or this

Marine phytoplankton have a crucial role in Earth's biogeochemical cycles, and form the basis of marine ecosystems. Data from satellite remote sensing — available since 1979 — have provided evidence that phytoplankton biomass has fluctuated on the decadal scale, linked to climate forcing, but a few decades of data are insufficient to indicate long-term trends. Daniel Boyce and colleagues now put these results in a long-term context by estimating local, regional and global trends in phytoplankton biomass since 1899, based on a range of sources including measurements of ocean transparency with a device known as a Secchi disk, and shipboard analyses of various types. What emerges from the records is a century of decline of global phytoplankton biomass. The authors estimate that the decline of phytoplankton standing stock has been greatest at high latitudes, in equatorial regions, in oceanic areas and in more recent years. Trends in most areas are correlated significantly to increasing ocean warming, and leading climate indices

Or this

Global temperatures in the first half of the year were the hottest since records began more than a century ago, according to two of the world's leading climate research centres.


Scientists have also released what they described as the "best evidence yet" of rising long-term temperatures. The report is the first to collate 11 different indicators – from air and sea temperatures to melting ice – each one based on between three and seven data sets, dating back to between 1850 and the 1970s.

Or this

The report emphasizes that human society has developed for thousands of years under one climatic state, and now a new set of climatic conditions are taking shape. These conditions are consistently warmer, and some areas are likely to see more extreme events like severe drought, torrential rain and violent storms.



“Despite the variability caused by short-term changes, the analysis conducted for this report illustrates why we are so confident the world is warming,” said Peter Stott, Ph.D., contributor to the report and head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution of the United Kingdom Met Office Hadley Centre. “When we look at air temperature and other indicators of climate, we see highs and lows in the data from year to year because of natural variability. Understanding climate change requires looking at the longer-term record. When we follow decade-to-decade trends using multiple data sets and independent analyses from around the world, we see clear and unmistakable signs of a warming world.”

While year-to-year changes in temperature often reflect natural climatic variations such as El Niño/La Niña events, changes in average temperature from decade-to-decade reveal long-term trends such as global warming. Each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before. At the time, the 1980s was the hottest decade on record. In the 1990s, every year was warmer than the average of the previous decade. The 2000s were warmer still.

So we have plankton dying off in such numbers in the oceans that their total population has dropped 40% since 1950.  No big deal, they just provide HALF THE OXYGEN WE BREATHE.

We have the hottest global year on record, EVER, yes, even counting the snow we got in the northeast.

CO2 levels are going through the roof and Russia is now burning.  I mention Russia because Siberia has the world's largest volume of trapped methane gas in its soils.   If those frozen soils melt, just once, trillions of tons of CH4 methane will be released.   Methane is many times more dangerous than CO2 as it is a much stronger warming agent in the atmosphere.   In other words, we are VERY CLOSE to a tipping point at which point no change in energy policy, car use or whatever else will slow down warming.   The seas will die, the oxygen levels will drop off, and it will just get hotter and hotter from there...

This is a big deal, so big in fact, that we are close to leaving our children and grand children with a really shitty planet for them to live in.   Yet public apathy continues, reinforced by deliberate misinformation by the various industries that fear pollution controls the most - oil and coal.

In light of the heavy lobbying by these industries, and the public's apathy to the future of the planet, this happened this month :

Conceding that they can't find enough votes for the legislation, Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned efforts to put together a comprehensive energy bill that would seek to curb greenhouse gas emissions, delivering a potentially fatal blow to a proposal the party has long touted and President Obama campaigned on.


Instead, Democrats will push for a more limited measure that would seek to increase liability costs that oil companies would pay following spills such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico. It also would create additional incentives for the development of natural gas vehicles and would provide rebates for products that reduce home energy use. Senate Democrats said they expected to find GOP support for the bill and pass it in the next two weeks.

ah not so fast, that apparently is also too much to expect, this is what we hear this week :

Senate Democrats and Republicans appear on a collision course that would sink chances of passing oil-spill and energy legislation amid disagreements over both substance and process.


Democratic leaders Wednesday foretold the likely failure of the package and blamed Republicans for obstructing it and other legislation.

So there we have it.   We are trashing the planet and no one is adult enough to do anything about it.  Cheers.
Time to go build some nice Zygaruts and Statues, don't you think ?  Someone will have to find out about us when we are long gone from the planet....

.

Updated data from NOAA, the National Oceanic & Atmosphere Administration

NOAA has a long and respected history for impartial and reliable science, seving both the US Government and marine based industry with weather and climate research and modeling. NOAA is an excellent resource for raw data concerning climate trend in North America. I will present several NOAA graphs here which provide a good general picture of the trend of key climate parameters, underlying change already underway.

However, before we get to the charts, I must make an important point on how scientific charts should be interpreted. There has been much deliberate confusion of the public recently by climate deniers claiming that over a certain period, warming has stop, or even, reversed. This conclusion is reached by cheating the data. Take any one point in a bar chart for example and compare to another. If you cherry pick the two dates to arrive at a particular conclusion, you can try to pick, for example, an unusually hot year 10 or 20 years ago, and compare to a normal recent year. This trick gives the illusion that warming is not occurring and is deliberately used to cause confusion in the public, reducing interest in regulating emissions and tackling climate change.

As with any long term data, these charts should be viewed by looking at the general average trend over many years. When looked at in this manner, the data is very strongely in favor of the conclusions climate scientists have reached - we are approaching a very dangerous climate event.

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[source : http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-global-temperature ]

This chart depicts the trend in global average temperates from 1880 to 2009. These temperature readings are an average of all global temperates for each year, readings taken from all over the globe. In this time period although individual spikes and dips show short term variability, the trend is crystal clear, a notable acceleration in total world average temperate since the early 1970s. We are at least forty years into this trend, if you ignore the beginning warming in the 1930s and 1940s.

This is not a model, these are real measured temperatures from weather readings around the world, averaged to an average yearly temp and then plotted for this timeline. The trend is significant.

The next chart we should look at infers the most probable cause of this warming trend - rapidly building levels of atmospheric gases which are scientifically proven to cause "greenhouse" warming effects when they accumulate to sufficient volume. The ability of these gases to cause a warming event are solid concluded science, there is no scientific debate on this. The debate concerns how much of an effect, how rapid the effect builds, and how quickly it can be turned around.

For the last 50 years, global temperatures rose at an average rate of about
0.13c (around one quarter degree Fahrenheit) per decade - almost twice as fast
as the 0.07c per decade increase observed over the previous half-century.
In the next 20 years, scientists project that global average temperature will
rise by around 0.2c (about one-third of a degree Fahrenheit) per
decade.

The most abundant greenhouse gas (but not the most dangerous per part per million) is of course Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Carbon Dioxide is produced by living organisms, both animal and plant, through geophysical processes, and human activity such as buring fossil fuels. The Earth has a natural baseline balance, a natural level of CO2, Nitrogen and Oxygen levels which have been relatively stable prior to the 20th Century for the entire time period in which human civilization has been present. Large scale change in the make up of our atmosphere (approx 4 miles thick before you reach space) would have a significant impact on the long term balance of life on this planet. Already, we have seen long drought periods in various areas of the planet including the American southwest, Australia and the African continent. These drought areas are growing and already diminishing the available farmland for our food needs (both cattle and produce farming).

This graph indicates a clear and sustained increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the analysis period of 1958 to 2008.  The warming effect of CO2 is proven settled science.

The vast majority of climate scientists are concerned that the dramatic rise in carbon dioxide is causing the planet to warm. Likely consequences of global warming include sea level rise, shifting precipitation patterns, expansion of areas affected by drought, increasing numbers of severe heat waves, and more intense precipitation events.
Scientists are also concerned that carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean from the atmosphere is increasing the acidity of seawater. This change in ocean chemistry interferes with the ability of marine plants and animals to build their shells, ultimately threatening a reorganization of the entire marine food chain, which could lead to a mass extinction event.

CO2 is a global heating gas (GHG).  When you increase levels of GHGs you increase the heat of a planet. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, global CO2 levels have increased 25%.  For further information on the proven science behind greenhouse effect and CO2, please take a look at this article : 

[article : A Hyperlinked History of Climate Change Science ]

The Greenhouse Effect :





This substantial increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be traced back to several changes in human behavior in the 19th and 20th centuries, namely deforestation (cutting down trees which naturally absorb CO2 and produce Oxygen) and the increasing rates at which we are mining and burning fossi fuels (coal, gas, oil).   The following illustration summarizes the breakdown of CO2 increases by source and their impact.

[source : http://unfccc.int/essential_background/feeling_the_heat/items/2903.php ]




In addition to warming the atmosphere, increased CO2 levels are also absorbed into the world's oceans.   High levels of CO2 absorption will eventually cause the acidity of the oceans to increase.   Critical elements of the ocean sea chain including plankton and shellfish are highly impacted by the pH of the water, increases in acidity would significantly reduce the levels of plankton and shellfish in the oceans, reducing food supplies for significant portions of the marine food chain.   More troubling still, plankton are one of the largest producers of atmospheric oxygen in the world.   Indeed, the original source of atmospheric oxygen in the early years of the evolution of life on Earth was indeed from early plankton organisms.

Please refer to the following article (PDF) by the NOAA on ocean acidification :

[article : Carbon Dioxide and Our Ocean Legacy ]


Ocean Acidification: Anthropogenic, Carbon dioxide, Earth's atmosphere, PH, Biological pump, Carbon sink, Carbonate compensation depth, Continental shelf ... Ocean Data Analysis Project, Solubility pump

Finally, lets take a look at global sea level trends.  Warming of the atmosphere, the oceans and the surface of the planet is resulting in the release of ice from glaciers, the arctic pack, antartica and the melting of snows that usually remain in place year round.  All of this melted ice and snow flows as water back into the oceans resulting in more water volume.  Just as adding water to a bath tub increases its level, adding large volumes of water to the oceans has the same effect.    The following graph represents sea level readings at New York from 1920 to 2009, based on readings from the same tide gauge station. 



Again we have a very clear upward trend in sea levels.   Its notable that warming has accelerated in this same window and acceleration is expected to increase rate further as warming begins to release other greenhouse gases (most notably, methane trapped in frozen soils in Siberia, Scandinavia and northern Canadian territories.  Methane is a far more dangerous gas than CO2 in terms of warming effect).

Rising sea levels present a significant risk of flooding for millions of people around the globe.   The current predicted sea level change assuming moderate to little reduction in CO2 pollution would result in the permanent flooding of lands currently occupied by millions :

A recent Nature study suggested that Greenland's ice sheet will begin to melt if the temperature there rises by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit). That is something many scientists think is likely to happen in another hundred years.   The complete melting of Greenland would raise sea levels by 7 meters (23 feet). But even a partial melting would cause a one-meter (three-foot) rise. Such a rise would have a devastating impact on low-lying island countries, such as the Indian Ocean's Maldives, which would be entirely submerged.


Densely populated areas like the Nile Delta and parts of Bangladesh would become uninhabitable, potentially driving hundreds of millions of people from their land.  A one-meter sea level rise would wreak particular havoc on the Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard of the United States.   "No one will be free from this," said Overpeck, whose maps show that every U.S. East Coast city from Boston to Miami would be swamped. A one-meter sea rise in New Orleans, Overpeck said, would mean "no more Mardi Gras."

[source : http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0420_040420_earthday_2.html ]

To sum up, the NOAA is on the record with hard imperical data confirming warming, confirming rising CO2 levels are the prime source, confirming human activity is the primary factor in the release of this CO2, and confirming sea level increases are on a dangerous trajectory.   A quote from nature sums up where we are quite succinctly :

"Is society aware of the seriousness of climate warning? I don't think so," said Marianne Douglas, a geology professor at the University of Toronto. "If we were, we'd all be leading our lives differently. We'd see a society that embraced alternative sources of energy, with less dependency on fossil fuels."   Overpeck says passing on the problem of global warming to future generations is like ignoring a government budget deficit. "Except with the deficit, there are economic mechanisms that could be put in place to get out of the large deficit," he said. "With sea level rise, there's really no technological way to put the ice back on Greenland."